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Careers in Science
Careers in Science is the second episode of Season 1 and the overall second episode of The Venture Bros. Plot As shown through the Venture Industries Recruitment E.D.F.S No. 1036 video (titled "Careers in Science"), Jonas Venture Sr. created the Gargantua 1 space station, which houses up to 9,000 Venture Industries employees. The video serves to promote itself as a future career employer for school children of the time, and demonstrates a young Dr. Venture - nicknamed "Rusty" by family and the media at the time - as showcasing the opportunities this space station brings. However, flash forwarding to present day, Brock Samson is piloting a spacecraft to take Dr. Venture, Hank Venture, Dean Venture, and H.E.L.P.eR. to the Gargantua 1 station, which is needing repairs. Venture gets a headache reliving his memories of the space station, which is furthered by Hank and Dean's bickering. The boys are shushed, but Dean complains that he's now unable to read his Giant Boy Detective book; regardless, the fact that he's already read within a moving vehicle is enough to make him throw up inside his space suit. H.E.L.P.eR. tries to help, but to no avail. Eventually Team Venture reaches Gargantua 1 and Brock docks with the space station after receiving a welcome call from Colonel Bud Manstrong. Brock, guiding the blatantly phallic Venture ship into the docking shaft, manages to flirt with docking controller Lieutenant Anna Baldavitch at the same time through blatant innuendo, which only serves to annoy the impatient Dr. Venture. Team Venture are met inside the space station by Bud, who mistakes Brock as being Dr. Venture. Anna also takes off her helmet, but Brock and the boys are shocked with how unattractive she seemingly is. Bud leads Dr. Venture, Hank and Dean to where the repairs are needed, and shares a horror story with the boys about back during his time as being a paperboy on the space station, when an employee nicknamed "Phantom Spaceman" went mad and ejected a large portion of the staff into space, under the pretense of gathering to watch the 1981 Burt Reynolds film ''Sharky's Machine''. After an elevator ride, Bud reveals what's wrong: a red light labelled "PROBLEM" on one of the super-computers has lit up. Bud looked up the procedure for such an event, which simply stated that the correct protocol is to require the assistance of Dr. Venture. After urinating himself after mistakenly thinking his spacesuit will collect the waste, Dr. Venture uses his Communicator Watch to contact Brock, who is with H.E.L.P.eR. in the cargo bay. Brock states that the mission is a waste of time, and finds no fault with the space station; however, it's not long before Dr. Venture accidentally opens the cargo bay doors, ejecting a few cargo crates into space and endangering Brock. H.E.L.P.eR. is sucked into space by the vacuum. The ordeal is observed by Anna, who is within a tower overlooking the cargo section, and she runs to save him, exclaiming his name in her shock. Unfortunately, Bud had just asked Anna if they were ready to take their relationship to a new level after six years of mere "hand-holding" - as she exclaims Brock's name and exits, he presumes that he has been denied her love. Due to his urination, Dr. Venture has Dean and Hank run to the cargo bay to find him a clean spacesuit. Dr. Venture then closes the cargo bay doors as their opening had only made the problem light blink; he then de-activates the artificial gravity but then turns it back on - in doing so, he falls from mid-air, hitting his head on the desk and making him unconscious. Hank and Dean reach the cargo section just as Anna does, and they find Brock inside, frozen due to his exposure of space, but miraculously alive. Hank and Dean mistake the discolored Brock as being the ghost of the Phantom Spaceman, and run back to their father to warn him, only to find him unconscious - but believing him to be dead, they run away. Outside the space station, H.E.L.P.eR. continues his helpless motion through space, until he hits a satellite, though he manages to use it to contact random people on Earth for help. Dr. Venture wakes up, but finds that hitting his head has caused him to hallucinate a giant version of his father, Jonas Venture. They instantly disagree with each other, as Jonas believes himself to be a ghost, and they conclude that Dr. Venture blames himself for the unidentified problem with the space station. Meanwhile, Brock gets up from a short rest, and proceeds to have sex with Anna, but under the condition that she keep her helmet on. Meanwhile, Hank gets angry at Dean's reliance on the Giant Boy Detective book, but they come across Brock in another room. In their naivety, they believe Brock and Anna's tough love-making is Brock's attempt to fight off Anna, who, as she is masked, they mistake to be Phantom Spaceman. Eventually Anna's helmet is knocked off and they realize Brock is safe, but this only further confirms their belief in the Phantom Spaceman, as he could still be on the loose. H.E.L.P.eR. somehow manages to fling himself from the satellite and into Gargantua 1's direction. He manages to re-board the space station, but penetrates the hull in doing so, causing the problem light to blink again, distressing Dr. Venture. To combat the stress, he takes more "diet pills", which also makes the Jonas hallucination disappear. H.E.L.P.eR., covered in a sheet with a bucket over his head due to the room he awkwardly landed into, roams the hallways and encounters Hank and Dean - but instead of helping their robotic assistant, they beat him down, thinking him to be Phantom Spaceman. With their enemy defeated, they eject H.E.L.P.eR. into space. Again. Elsewhere, Bud comes across Anna, who voices his rage about her sexual encounter with Brock, but Anna walks away from the argument. Dr. Venture announces the hull breach over the space station's intercom system, and requests Brock. Brock arrives and is tasked with repairing the hole that H.E.L.P.eR. made, as is Bud who volunteers to join him. Dr. Venture meanwhile investigates a strange liquid oozing from the sides of a panel beneath his control terminal, and finds a melting cowboy figurine interfering with the wires. However, the toy is actually Dr. Venture's from his childhood days on the space station; he is the source of the space station's problems. He removes the forgotten relic, which finally turns off the problem light. Hank and Dean return, and are glad to see their father alive again. Dr. Venture changes outfit to a clean spacesuit. Outside Gargantua 1 at the hull breach, Brock is fixing the damage. Bud admits his loss of Anna, and accepts that Brock has won her affection, but Bud places his hand on Brock's shoulder. Brock instinctively beats up Bud in a self-defensive trance, and leaves Bud to remain in the vacuum. He begs Anna to let him back in, though she waits for him to apologize. Team Venture depart in their rocket - the thrusters of which force Bud to hit his head off one of the space station's windows and bounce back, drifting off into space. Unknown to anyone, Dr. Venture's discarded, urinated spacesuit starts leaking onto the controls Dr. Venture had previously been operating at, which makes the problem light resume blinking, just as it was at the start of the episode. Episode Cast *'James Urbaniak': Dr. Venture *[[wikipedia:Michael_Sinterniklaas|'Michael Sinterniklaas']]: Dean Venture *[[wikipedia:Patrick_Warburton|'Patrick Warburton']]: Brock Samson *[[Chris McCulloch|'Chris McCulloch']]: Hank Venture, Filmstrip Narrator *'Terrence Fleming': Bud Manstrong *'Paul Boocock': Jonas Venture Sr. *'Nina Hellman': Anna Baldavitch, Woman on Cell Phone *'Soul-Bot': H.E.L.P.eR. First Appearances * Anna Baldavitch * Bud Manstrong * Gargantua-1 * Giant Boy Detective * Jonas Venture Sr. (filmstrip, hallucination) * Movie Night (mentioned) * PROBLEM Connections to Other Episodes The "Morpho Trilogy" *First reference to the PROBLEM machine, which becomes a key plot point in the "Morpho Trilogy" at the beginning of Season 7, as seen in the episodes ''The Venture Bros. & The Curse of the Haunted Problem'', ''The Rorqual Affair'', and ''Arrears in Science''. Cultural References [[wikipedia:2001: A Space Odyssey (film)|'2001: A Space Odyssey']]' (1968)' * The red light on the PROBLEM is a nod to HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. [https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6387/mr-mouth Mr. Mouth] * Anna Baldavitch's father purportedly invented Mr. Mouth, a children's action game. A motorized frog head rotates in the center of an X-shaped board. Each player uses a spring-loaded hand affixed to each arm of the X to propel plastic housefly pieces into the frog's mouth, which periodically opens and closes. The first player to flip all ten of his or her flies into the frog's mouth wins. [[wikipedia:Neil Armstrong|'Neil Armstrong']] *It's possible that Bud Manstrong's surname is a reference to the first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong, due to the similarity of the surname and the space setting. [[wikipedia:Sharky's_Machine|''Sharky's Machine]]' (1981)' * Bud Manstrong says that the movie playing when "Phantom Spaceman" opened the cargo bay doors was the 1981 Burt Reynolds film [[wikipedia:Sharky's_Machine|''Sharky's Machine]]. Production Notes *One of the animation directors (Kimson Albert) has a "nickname" inserted into his credits. The nickname is an unusual line or word from the preceding episode. For this episode, the nickname provided is Kimson "Peligro" Albert. Category:Season 1 Category:Episodes Category:The Venture Bros. episodes Category:2004 television episodes